


Unikkausivut

by PrioritiesSorted



Series: Erosion [4]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Gen, Storytelling, but also very much a stand-alone, this fic is technically in the 'Erosion' universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/pseuds/PrioritiesSorted
Summary: When his Mom puts Kya into his stubby, six year old arms, Bumi falls instantly and utterly in love.
Relationships: Bumi II & Kya II (Avatar), Lin Beifong/Kya II
Series: Erosion [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937920
Comments: 35
Kudos: 178
Collections: KyaLin Week 2020





	Unikkausivut

**Author's Note:**

> For Kyalin Week 2020 Day Two: Supportive Siblings
> 
> Title from the Inuktitut word meaning "sharing our stories". (Please let me know if I'm mistaken in this!) 
> 
> Did I set out to write a shippy fic? Yes. Did I actually write 4k of Cloudkid Family Feels? Also yes.

When his Mom puts Kya into his stubby, six year old arms, Bumi falls instantly and utterly in love. Hours that had previously been spent scrambling over rocks and into trees are now spent crouched on the floor next to his sister, scrunching his face into as many different expressions as he can find to make her laugh; he dangles brightly coloured feathers just out of reach, so she stretches out her perfect little baby fingers to try and grasp them. 

When she begins to toddle, he follows in her shadow, just in case she falls and needs someone to catch her. When she flaps her arms and asks to fly “like Daddy”, he picks her up at the waist and runs with her until her hair whips behind her. When she is three and she bends water for the first time, pulling a handful of the ocean from the bay to splash her brother in the face, Bumi tucks her under his arm and runs—yelling all the time for their mother—back to the house. 

Bumi sees less of his sister after that. He knows that Kya’s training is important, he sees how much joy it brings their Mom, but his days feel empty without her. Bumi finds himself waiting impatiently for the evenings, when Kya rushes into his bedroom and demands to show him the latest move she has learned, or the progress she has made that day. Bumi can’t deny the envy that bubbles up inside him with every graceful sweep of her arms, and every expression of deep concentration, but he grins broadly for every show, and tells her how clever she is. No matter how Bumi feels, he will not be his father, who only ever gives a bland, “that’s great, honey”, before his eyes flick over to their Mom’s swollen belly with an expression of longing. 

It isn’t until their Dad is bundling their Mom onto Appa’s back—yelling instructions over his shoulder at Sokka as the sky bison speeds off towards Republic City hospital—that it dawns on Bumi just how much this second sibling will change things. What if Kya loves it more than she loves him? What if she takes one look at its scrunched up newborn face and loves it immediately, the way Bumi loves her? Then again, Bumi had been six—nearly grown up, he had known how to read and to do sums—when Kya was born, but Kya is only three. Surely three is too little to understand the full scope of what it means to be a big sister. 

It is certainly too little to really understand what’s happening. She begins whimpering, then sobbing as Appa disappears into the distance. Bumi supposes that if _he_ were so little, he wouldn’t understand what was happening to their Mom either, but as it is, he’s nearly ten, and he knows what childbirth is. It is dangerous, he knows, but Mom has delivered two children already, so it makes sense that the third will be easier. This, however, proves to be a difficult concept to explain to a three year old, so despite Uncle Sokka’s best efforts, it falls to Bumi to placate his sister until Mom and Dad return. 

He carries Kya back to his room—a warm, sniffling weight in his still-skinny arms—and tucks her beneath the covers, ensuring she is fully cocooned before he starts telling the story. He’d tried telling her a few old folk tales when she was younger, or stories their parents had told him, but Kya has always preferred the ones Bumi makes up; they are full of adventure and derring-do, of pirates and swordfights and magic. It takes three different stories to get Kya to sleep that evening, but he doesn’t mind indulging her—the tales distract him as much as they do her. When her eyes finally flutter closed, Bumi watches her little chest rise and fall, wondering how long it will be before she no longer needs him, before Mom presents her with a tiny bundle that will steal her heart the way she’d stolen his. 

But the expected abandonment never comes; though Kya is fascinated by their baby brother, she doesn’t have the patience to sit with him for hours on end while he does nothing but gurgle and sleep. She much prefers things that are active, and that is where Bumi excels. Bumi himself had been so caught up in his fear that Kya would love their new brother more than him, he’d forgotten that _he_ would love Tenzin too. His brother lacks the wide-eyed wonder that Bumi adored in baby Kya, but his big grey eyes seem old, and Bumi likes to imagine that Tenzin’s nonsensical baby babble is an attempt to impart deep wisdom. 

When Tenzin proves to be an airbender at four, he disappears from their playtime, so caught up is their father in teaching his favourite child the ways of his people. With every passing year, their father and brother spend more and more time away from home, leaving Kya and Bumi to take care of their Mom. Katara always insists she doesn’t _need_ to be taken care of, and Bumi might be thirteen, but he knows what loneliness looks like. 

The older he gets, the more he sees loneliness everywhere he turns; the lines in his mother’s face are filled with it, and in years after Suki dies— _too young,_ everyone says, though forty seems ancient to a teenaged Bumi—he sees it fill the silence that used to be his Uncle Sokka’s laughter. It shouldn’t be there in Lin Beifong, so small and so forthright even at three, but he sees it in the way she looks up at Katara with big eyes whenever it is time to be taken back to the city. He is eighteen when he begins to see it in Kya; it isn’t as obvious as with the others, but it is there in the way she starts to edge around certain conversations, or retreat to her room where once she would have wanted to stay up as late as possible. 

When Bumi leaves for the United Forces at nineteen, his sister clings to him on the harbour, her face buried in his chest. He strokes her brown hair and promises to come back, to bring her whatever she wants from the Fire Nation. She looks up at him, face still tear-streaked, and smiles. 

“I don’t want _things,_ Bumi. I only want you to come back, and to tell me stories.” 

* * *

Two years pass before Bumi returns from his first tour, and he feels changed in almost as many ways as he feels the same. When he steps back onto Air Temple Island, he finds that he has not changed nearly as much as his home has. Quite apart from the thousand small changes that make Air Temple Island feel alien in a way he can’t quite describe, Tenzin and Kya are now people he barely recognises. Tenzin at twelve is serious and studious; Bumi isn’t sure at what point he’d become aware of the weight of their father’s legacy, but he feels a rare pang of sympathy for his brother, who had been so carefree when he left. Kya had barely come up above his waist at thirteen, but at fifteen she is almost to his shoulder; she yells and throws herself into his arms upon his arrival, but it doesn’t take long to notice the heaviness, the reticence within her has grown in the years he’s been away. 

Somehow, the gap in age between Bumi and his siblings seems larger now than it had been when he left. It’s odd, and Bumi finds that he no longer knows how to approach his sister; it no longer feels appropriate to pin her down and tickle her until she confesses, for the sadness in her breath tells of something that can’t be roughoused away. Instead, for the two weeks he is home, Bumi watches Kya closely. He notices the way she hovers around their mother, and the way she often takes a breath as if to speak, only to say nothing. He notices the way she _doesn’t_ notice bright green eyes following her wherever she goes. 

He supposes that she will tell him when she feels ready—whatever it is that’s bothering her. Bumi is not a patient man by nature; after two years of being the first to run headlong into danger, Bumi has learned a lot about himself, but even he knows that emotions of a teenage girl are a different kind of battle ground. He gives her space, still drinking in her smiles and her laughter, telling as many stories as he can—perhaps embellishing a _little_ , just to hear her gasp in excitement—and waiting for her to remember all the reasons she trusts him. 

When it finally spills out of her the night before he leaves, Bumi folds his sister in his arms and lets her soak his tunic with tears of relief. He strokes her hair as he tells her that he doesn’t see her any differently, she is who she has always been; he tells her that he’ll come home to be with her when she tells their parents, if she wants him to; he tells her that that he doesn’t think they’ll react poorly, but that he understands it’s scary all the same. This only seems to make her cry harder, and he’s relieved to hear a fragile burst of laughter when he says, 

“No boy was ever going to be good enough for you, anyway.” 

* * *

Bumi doesn’t mean to be away from home for so long, he truly doesn’t. He writes letters when he can, relating his every adventure in as much detail as he can muster. Kya writes back to say she would love to hear the tales in person, and Bumi promises to take a break as soon as he can. “As soon as he can” turns out to be three years after his last visit, and by the time he makes it back to Air Temple Island, Kya is gone. The island is his home, and he loves his parents, he loves Tenzin, but it doesn’t feel _right_ without Kya. He wonders if this was how she has felt for the last five years. If it is, he can’t blame her for leaving. 

* * *

When Bumi sees his sister again, it’s in a bar in the Fire Nation. She breezes up to him—tall and willowy and a real, full grown _person_ —only to encase him in the tightest hug of his life. When he tells her he’s missed her, his eyes are slightly misty, but she doesn’t rib him about it, because she’s an angel (and because her eyes are a little misty too). 

It’s strange to buy his baby sister a drink—as if she isn’t in her twenties—and stranger to see the easy way she swallows it; he remembers sneaking her a sip of whiskey when she was fifteen, and the way her face scrunched up, shivering through her whole body. A few drinks in, Bumi finds the tables have turned, and it is now Kya who regales him with stories of her exploits. She is describing a particular sunrise over Caldera—seen from the rooftop of a prominent Fire Nation noble, whose daughter was _definitely_ not interested in any of the suitors she was set to meet that morning—when Bumi’s heart suddenly feels so full he can barely breathe. He has missed her in more ways than he realised: he has missed being beside her as she grew into the woman he sees before him now, and Bumi quietly vows never to go so long again without seeing her. 

When he finally remembers to ask about Tenzin, Kya’s face darkens. He and Lin are an item now, apparently, and Kya looks on the brink of tears as she laughs it off with a quip about opposites attracting. As much as she tries to wave it away, Bumi knows a broken heart when he sees one. There’s clearly a story he’s missed since he was last home, when Kya had barely noticed that Lin existed; he wonders what happened between then and now, when Lin had stopped watching Kya, and Kya had started watching Lin. 

She looks at him, and her eyes are just as big, just as blue as when they were young; he remembers this look from a hundred scraped knees and dropped ice creams. He can’t fix this the way he could back then, but he can certainly try. He places a hand gently over hers. 

“It’s stupid,” she says, though the way her hand shakes beneath his says differently. “It was one kiss. It was nothing. I’ll get over it.” 

* * *

Over the years, there are many drinks in many bars in every corner of the world. Kya is always witty and glib and she tells him she’s happy. Bumi always wants to believe her.

* * *

Uncle Sokka is dead. He’s dead, and for the first time in too many years, the entire family is back on Air Temple Island. Kya has been helping their Mom with funeral arrangements, while Bumi helps out around the house wherever he can. He tries to keep his mind occupied as much as possible, tries to keep it together because his Mom has lost her brother, it is _her_ grief that matters now. Bumi busies himself around the island, trying not to look too long at the courtyard where Sokka had taught him swordplay, or the old yuzu tree where Sokka had taken Bumi under his arm and told him he was justas special as his siblings, that he could accomplish just as much. 

Instead, he watches his family. (They never imagine that he does this: Bumi is loud and brash and impulsive, he is not the sort of man who _notices_ things.) On the second day of his homecoming, Lin arrives on the island, folding Katara into a firm embrace as soon as her feet find land. Bumi watches as she pulls back, looks his mother directly in the eye and says, 

“I am so sorry, Katara.” 

Katara doesn’t reply, but she squeezes Lin’s hand tightly. Tenzin looks terrified; he and their father have been tiptoe-ing around Mom since it happened, acknowledging her grief only in soft touches and lowered voices. Bumi privately thinks that Lin Beifong is too good for his brother. He _very_ privately thinks that she’s grown from a blandly pretty girl into the kind of woman who makes Bumi weak at the knees. It’s almost funny, the effect she has on the Avatar’s children—or it would be, if Kya had been telling the truth in that Fire Nation bar. 

Kya doesn’t have to say anything for Bumi to notice that her feelings have not faded over the years. She watches Lin out of the corner of her eye, and flinches when Tenzin touches her. Bumi’s almost surprised that no-one else seems to have noticed, but he can’t blame them. They’ve got other things to think about. 

Lin is more subtle. If Bumi hadn’t been looking out for it, he’s not certain he would have noticed the way her gaze flickers to Kya before anything else, or how she tries not to touch Tenzin too much when Kya is in the room. But he _is_ looking for it, and what he sees makes his heart break for the second time in as many weeks. 

* * *

As he fiddles with his dress uniform, Bumi muses on how every visit to Air Temple Island in the last decade has been miserable. First Sokka, then his father, now _this._ This ought to be a day of celebration, Bumi knows, he ought to be on top form, making fun of his little brother and telling all the embarrassing stories he can think of. This ought to be a time of joy, and there _is_ joy in it; as much as he resents his father, he wishes Aang were here to see the future of his people blossoming before him. 

Tenzin is getting married. Tenzin is getting married to a girl—and she is only a girl—Bumi has never met. Katara is half incandescent with joy at the small bump already protruding from Pema’s middle, and half desperately disappointed in her youngest son. Kya seethes with rage, and Bumi—as ever—takes her side. He knows why she’s angry, and that anger is justified, but he wonders where her hope is. Kya had always been the one to hope, the first one to crack a smile and say something wise and witty. Now she is silent; she is pointedly silent in the days before the wedding, she is blankly silent during the ceremony, and her absence is her silence in the party that follows. 

Bumi finds her sitting on the dock with her feet in the ocean. Beneath the night sky, the water of the bay stretches out before them, the city lights suspended in its blackness. When he sits down beside her, Kya rests her head on his shoulder. He wants to ask her why she’s still here, when the city—when _she_ —is within reach, and he starts to. Kya cuts him off: 

“I’m not a consolation prize,” she says. It sounds as though she’s said it before, it sounds as though she’s said it a hundred times. 

* * *

The years are both kind and not. He still sees Kya as often as he can, he visits Mom in the Southern Water Tribe, and somehow it’s less painful than returning to the island. He finds that he spends more time complaining about his aching back, or his creaking knees, and Kya teases him ruthlessly about it. (She heals him, too, of course, but not without constant mocking commentary.)

Kya tells him how Mom is doing—how she’s _really_ doing, not how she pretends to be doing whenever anyone asks—and about the new Avatar, how different she is from Aang already. He tells her how little Iroh is doing in the force—not so little anymore—and how sometimes he wishes he’d had kids of his own. 

They don’t talk about Lin. He tries, a couple of times, to edge them towards the topic, but he’s never been the subtlest of people, and Kya deflects his questions with a deftness that leaves him wondering what he’d been trying to ask in the first place. There’s a tale to be told there, he knows, but she doesn’t wish to share it with him. He tries his best not to feel put out by it, tries not to wonder what he’s done wrong for her to stop trusting him with her every secret. It takes him a few years to realise that it isn’t about him. 

It’s his Mom who makes him realise. The fire in the hearth fills the whole hut with warmth, and Bumi can almost forget that they’re surrounded on all sides by ice. Bumi has made the mistake of asking after his new nephew, if Kya had happened to see anyone else while she was in Republic City, and the air in the hut seems to stand still as Kya breezes past him to collect her parka. She says that Meelo is darling, but she was only in the city for a few days—not an answer, not even close—and she bids her family goodnight, disappearing into the snow. 

Bumi lets his head fall onto the table, and his Mom puts a comforting hand on his back. 

“She doesn’t like to talk about it,” Katara says, sounding almost as defeated as he feels. “Talking about it makes it real.” 

* * *

The next time Bumi and Kya are together in the South Pole, it’s the firelight festival, and they ought to be happy. He thinks, for a blissful moment, that they _are_ happy—the city is bustling, and their family is together, and the lights are every colour he can imagine—but the first moment they’re alone, Kya’s shoulders slump, and her eyes fill with tears. 

“I think—I think I made a mistake, Bumi.” 

He doesn’t ask what happened, and she doesn’t tell him. He strokes her silver hair and starts to tell her a story. 

* * *

Bumi refuses to think that getting airbending is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. The general atmosphere on Air Temple is one of joy, but Bumi isn’t the only one who struggles. He notices the way Tenzin’s eyes flicker to Lin more often than usual, and he notices the pointed way she avoids his gaze in return. He notices that Kya notices, too. 

She doesn’t need to tell him for Bumi to know she’s hurting. He doesn’t need to tell her for Kya to know that Bumi feels more conflicted that he lets on. It’s only Kya who understands both how much he’s _dreamed_ of this, and how much he resents it. He wonders if he’s been lying to himself for sixty years, insisting that he doesn’t need to be a bender, he doesn’t _want_ to be a bender. He hates that all he wants is for his father to be there, for Aang to tell Bumi he’s proud. 

He thinks if he starts talking about it, then he’ll start crying, and if he starts crying, he won’t stop for a very long time. Instead, he shows Kya every trick he can think of, and she laughs. 

“You’ll be an airbending master in no time, Bumi,” she says, as he sets marbles swirling between his palms, the way Dad used to. “I’m proud of you.” 

* * *

He is holding on by the pads of his fingers, and she’s telling him to let go. On any other day, in any other situation, this would be what Bumi lives for: fighting terrorists and barely making it out with his life. Only this time it’s not only his life, it’s Kya’s, and there’s not enough _time._ If they’re going to die one way or the other—whether P’li or the cold hard ground hits them first—he needs to tell her how much he loves her. 

But there’s not enough time, and he has to let go. 

* * *

Bumi wakes—as he has done every morning for three weeks—drenched in sweat, dreaming of falling. It’s not so much that _he_ is falling, he’s fallen from a good few heights in his day, but that _Kya_ is falling. They’re falling together, but she’s ahead of him, and he knows that he’ll have to watch her hit the ground. 

He’s still breathing heavily when Kya shoulders open his door, and relief floods him instantly. She sets down her crutch and sits on the edge of his bed, taking his hand in her own. She says nothing, but she has come to his room every morning since he told her about the dreams, just to sit with him for a while, until he feels the ground is solid beneath his feet again. This morning, though, there’s something different about her; a smile she seems utterly unable to repress tugs at the corners of her lips, and she shakes her head slightly as though in disbelief. It is only when the motion displaces the hair that had been draped over her shoulder that Bumi sees the dark, mouth shaped bruise on her neck. Theoretically, there are any number of women who could have left it there, but Bumi has spent the last few weeks watching Lin stare after Kya as though she were the brooding hero of a tragic romance, and he can’t help the grin that spreads from ear to ear. 

It takes Kya a couple of moments to realise what he’s looking at, but when she does, the skin of her cheek darkens, and her hand flutters up to cover the mark. She’s smiling though—the kind of smile Bumi hasn’t seen in _decades_ , carefree and giddy, and utterly irrepressible—and Bumi nudges her shoulder gently with his own. 

“Looks like you owe me a story.” 

**Author's Note:**

> If you do want to know the story that Kya's about to tell Bumi, please go ahead and read the earlier fics in this series! (Part 3 is the most heavily Kyalin)
> 
> Otherwise, thanks for reading, and if you liked it please drop me a comment or a kudo <3


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